5 Beaten Down Stocks Of Spooky October With Upside Potential

Wall Street witnessed wild swings in October, thanks to multiple woes including rising interest rates, political turbulence in Italy, Saudi tensions, tech sell-off, escalating US-China trade war and the prelude to mid-term election. The chaos resulted in S&P 500 posting its worst monthly performance since 2011.

After slipping into a correction territory, the index rebounded somewhat this week to close at down 6.9% for the month, buoyed by a slew of strong earnings as well as upbeat economic data that lifted investors’ sentiment. According to data from Howard Silverblatt of S&P Dow Jones Indices, the S&P 500 plunge shaved off $1.91 trillion in market cap last month with Amazon (AMZN – Free Report) , Microsoft (MSFT – Free Report) , NVIDIA (NVDA – Free Report) , Facebook (FB – Free Report) and Apple (AAPL – Free Report) bearing the brunt.

The slowdown in global growth, especially in a few developing and developed economies, added to the woes. The International Monetary Fund recently slashed its global growth forecast by 0.2 percentage points for this year and the next, citing trade tensions between the United States and its trading partners, which have started to hurt economic activity worldwide.

A number of stocks incurred heavy losses last month. Below, we have highlighted five such stocks from the S&P 500 Index that were hit badly by market turmoil but might reverse the trend, given solid Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) or 2 (Buy) and a solid VGM Score of B or better. Further, these stocks saw positive earnings estimate revisions last month and belong to a top-ranked Zacks Industry (top 45%), suggesting bright prospects.

Newfield Exploration Company (NFX  – Free Report) – Down 32%

This company explores, develops and acquires oil and natural gas properties primarily in the Gulf of Mexico. It witnessed solid earnings estimate revision of 9 cents for this year last month and has an expected growth rate of 65.1%. Newfield Exploration has a Zacks Rank #2 and a VGM Score of A. It further belongs to top-ranked Zacks industry (top 12%).